Waiting for Armageddon at Fast-Gas
My cousin Jack landed me a part- time job pumping gas at Fast Gas, a cut-rate station on Gravenstein Highway in Sebastopol, for $1.60 an hour. The manager, Lennie, who was finishing a psychology degree at Sonoma State, didn’t care if you showed up stoned, as long as the cash drawer matched the pump totals. It was perfect for students, hippies, and bikers—the kinds of people who played vinyl backward just to find secret messages.
There was always music. Someone would plug in a radio in the cash booth, or someone would park close, throw open their doors, and crank the tape deck: Carly Simon, Chuck Berry, The Moody Blues, Neil Young, The Rolling Stones, The Doors—it was a mixtape from the gods.
Back then, it was rare to see a woman pumping gas. Some jerk-offs would ask if I got off on sticking the nozzle in the tank. I’d fire back with something like, “Ahh, now I get why your old lady just filled out an application,” and then wiggle my little finger. Most folks, though, were decent. They let their bumper stickers do the talking. If a car had “Power to the People,” “SPLIT WOOD NOT ATOMS,” or “HONK! If you think he’s Guilty,” odds were we’d end up smoking a ragweed joint and sliding into a deep political conversation— the best times were when I’d catch a ride to a protest in Berkeley.
Soon, junior high and freshman girls started showing up, asking if I was the Shelah Johnson—like I was some kind of personal friend of fellow Analy High School alumnus Jerry Garcia. When I said yes, they got all doe- eyed, smiled, and hung out. I’m still not sure what that was all about—but I wasn’t mad about the attention.
Eventually, I got regulars who tipped when I washed their windows. My favorites were Ambrose and Ester, an elderly Black couple who ran a hog farm outside of town. They came in weekly for groceries. Ester didn’t say much, but her smile was radiant, and sometimes she brought me a ham sandwich on homemade bread. Ambrose, with his twisted, atretic hand, would always try to slip me a dollar, no matter Steven tried to talk me out of going, but he didn’t understand the grip a cult has on cradle-born members.
One day, I told them I was leaving for Arizona. They wanted to give me a hundred dollars—I refused. That night, they came back with a slightly used suitcase. I accepted with gratitude. We sat in the cab of their truck, talking about what we thought the end of the world would look like.
Having a job out in the open made it easy for people to find me. Not that I was hiding, but some encounters felt like ambushes.
One afternoon, my mother pulled up in her tan VW bus. She never bought Fast Gas—it would be uncouth. She parked to the side and waved me over. With the engine running, she gave me the once-over, especially the halter top I’d fashioned from two blue bandanas. Then she asked if I was ready to return to the Kingdom Hall and reminded me of the Governing Body’s prediction: Armageddon was coming by the end of 1975. I shook my head. She looked disappointed. I asked about my younger brother and sister. When I left home, my stepfather told me I wouldn’t be allowed to “associate” with them. I missed them.
Before cutting the conversation short, my mother handed me a paper bag from Fiesta Market. I figured it’d be vegetables from her garden. It wasn’t. Inside were six used bras.
That bag broke the spell. Fast Gas had been my hidey-hole—a waiting room for people who read. Some were waiting to see if their draft number came up. Others hoped the Missile Treaty with Russia would hold. A few still believed the Beatles might get back together. Me? I was holding out for the end of 1975, when Armageddon would wipe out all nonbelievers and leave Jehovah’s Witnesses to repopulate the Earth.
But I couldn’t imagine living for eternity. After 10,000 years, I’d be bored. No new books, no new experiments, no new ideas. In the time I had left, I wanted to move freely—without religion’s hand around my throat. I wanted to take part in the sexual revolution, follow my heart, and fight for the survival of the planet, for equal rights, and against the growing military complex. The idea that religion was sitting on its hands, hoping God would clean up the mess we made—like spoiled children—deeply angered me.
Not long after, Brother Faye pulled into the station. He was an elder in the Sebastopol congregation—a scrawny man in his late sixties. Like my mother, he stayed in the car and instructed me to get in the back seat. My coworkers stared. Some thought I was being kidnapped. Others guessed he was a narc.
He lectured me via the rearview mirror for twenty minutes on the wages of sin. Then my boyfriend, Steven, tapped on the window. Brother Faye flinched.
Steven had waist-length, thick black hair, loose and shining. His eyes were Crater Lake blue. Even with a beard, his face and body looked as though they had been carved from myth.
“I gotta get back to work,” I told Faye, but I agreed to meet with him and two other elders later that evening.
Steven tried to talk me out of going, but he didn’t understand the grip a cult has on cradle-born members. His family was different—his father had fought in Korea, and his mother was modern, independent, and kind.
Their faith didn’t come with shackles.
That night, I arrived at a ranch house where one of the elders lived. I was led into a back room—a cross between a sewing nook and a storage shed. I was left alone, sitting on a freezing metal folding chair beneath an open transom window I couldn’t reach.
With nearly two hours to reflect, I thought about all the books I’d finally been free to read. My library card and my ’62 VW Bug were my most prized possessions. I chased conversations about Orwell, Huxley, Kesey, Faulkner, and Lawrence. I got curious about Buddhism, meditation, and yoga. But for the Witnesses, self- exploration was dangerous. They preached that reason separated us from animals—yet it was the very thing they feared most.
When the elders finally called me in, I stood tall. After looking at the starburst clock above the flagstone fireplace, I told them they had twelve minutes, as I, like Cinderella, would leave at midnight. I could tell by their faces they’d already made up their minds. They wanted to disfellowship me. But they needed a confession or three witnesses. They quickly got to it by asking if I was guilty of the sins listed in Galatians 5:19–21. I wanted to say “yes to murder and witchcraft,” just to mess with them. Instead, I simply said, “No.”
When the big hand stood straight up, so did I. Before they could bow their heads for the closing prayer, I had my Bug in third gear, tires spitting gravel. I knew I’d just been marked for shunning. But I didn’t care—I no longer belonged to them. I cut the umbilical cord that had been tied to me at birth and dropped it at their feet.
That night, I returned to Fast Gas, climbed over the back fence, and crossed the field to the old army tent with a pole in the middle, which had once belonged to Steven’s dad. Steven, his long dark hair still wet from the shower he took at his mother’s place, was stretched out on our sleeping bag, reading The Book of Chuang Tzu by the light of a kerosene lamp. He didn’t ask about the meeting. He didn’t need to.
We held each other and made love under the moonlight that peeked through the gaping hole in the canvas roof.
He fell asleep with one hand resting on my hip. The tent was quiet except for the soft flick of the kerosene lamp and his steady breathing. I stared up through the hole in the roof and counted stars, trying to pretend I didn’t feel like I was falling.
That’s when it hit me. I wasn’t just done with the elders. I was cut off. From my siblings. From everyone who had known me my whole life. The phone wouldn’t ring. Letters wouldn’t come. They wouldn’t even look at me in the store.
I had made the decision. And now I’d have to live with it.
I watched Steven sleep. His warmth still lingered on my skin, but the room felt colder than it should. My stomach turned—not from regret, but from the kind of fear that follows after you burn the bridge and realize you’re the one holding the match.